Fewer States around the world now maintained the death penalty in their national laws, and even among those that did so, a smaller number were engaged in active executions, senior human rights officials said at a Headquarters press conference today.

As Israel accelerated expansion of illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory in continued defiance of United Nations resolutions and international human rights and humanitarian law, Israeli and international companies profiting from the settlements should be boycotted, a top human rights expert said at a Headquarters news conference this afternoon.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has tapped a team of senior United Nations officials to carry out an impact assessment in the aftermath of the unprecedented hurricane which earlier this week had upended millions of lives and crippled the Organization’s facilities and operations across a nearly thousand mile area that stretched from the north-eastern United States to the Caribbean.

The Security Council’s work programme for November will be packed not only with discussions of difficult situations around the world, but also with business not completed at the end of last month, the Permanent Representative of India, which holds the body’s presidency for the month, told correspondents at Headquarters this afternoon.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon offered condolences to and expressed solidarity with the millions of people affected by Hurricane Sandy in the United States and Caribbean, as the United Nations and its partners worked to provide food and other aid in Haiti, where the storm left some 60 people dead and displaced more than 1.8 million others.

The human rights situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea showed “no sign of improvement” over the past eight months, a United Nations expert said today.

Humanitarian aid operations in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, although effective, were insufficient, John Ging, Director of Operations, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told reporters at a press conference at Headquarters today.

Despite the Internet’s importance as a communications vehicle, the platform was a powerful double-edged tool, capable of being used to both spread and combat racism, a human rights expert said today at Headquarters following a presentation to the General Assembly of two related reports.

Lakhdar Brahimi, Joint Special Representative for Syria, met last night in Cairo with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States, Nabil ElAraby. Speaking after the meeting, Mr. Brahimi said that the Syrian crisis could only be resolved through a political process agreed upon by all parties.

There have been sporadic fire fights between the Syrian security forces, including the Syrian army, and armed members of the opposition in the area of separation in Golan, the equivalent of a buffer zone between the parties under the 1974 Disengagement Agreement between the Israeli and Syrian forces.